A briefing on battery regulation, China's supply chain, and prices, for the people who buy and deploy the cells.
The EU's due diligence guidelines are due this Sunday. The 26 July 2026 deadline Regulation (EU) 2025/1561 set for the Commission to publish its battery due diligence guidelines, seven weeks out when our June issue covered it, is now four days away.
The battery passport clock is running with the standards still wet. The digital battery passport stays mandatory from 18 February 2027 for EV, LMT and industrial batteries above 2 kWh, yet several supporting CEN/CENELEC JTC 24 standards were only published in May 2026, two are still in draft, and the carbon-footprint methodologies are still evolving, less than eight months before go-live.
GB 38031-2025 is now in force. China's mandatory EV battery safety standard, previewed in our June issue three weeks before it took effect, has applied to newly type-approved models since 1 July 2026, with a full matrix of 7 cell-level and 17 pack/system-level tests.
China's battery export controls are suspended, with an expiry date. Export controls on lithium-ion batteries, cathode materials and artificial graphite anode materials plus their production equipment and technology (MOFCOM/GAC Announcement No. 58 of 2025) are suspended from 7 November 2025 until 10 November 2026.
The VAT rebate countdown continues. China's export VAT rebate on battery products dropped from 9% to 6% on 1 April 2026 and is eliminated entirely on 1 January 2027, materially raising export costs for Chinese battery manufacturers.
| Date | What changes | Who should care |
|---|---|---|
| 26 Jul 2026 | EU due diligence guidelines due from the Commission | Procurement / compliance |
| 10 Nov 2026 | China's lithium-battery + graphite export-control suspension expires | Importers of Chinese cells / materials |
| 1 Jan 2027 | China's export VAT rebate on battery products eliminated | Cell buyers / exporters |
| 18 Feb 2027 | EU QR code + digital battery passport mandatory (>2 kWh) | Anyone selling into the EU |
| 18 Aug 2027 | EU supply-chain due-diligence obligations apply | EU importers / distributors |
Sodium-ion goes commercial. CATL unveiled its TENER Sodium storage system in Munich on 22 June 2026, calling it the world's first field-validated sodium-ion BESS. First Chinese deliveries start September 2026, roughly 1 GWh of cumulative shipments are expected by end of 2026, and global deliveries start June 2027.
The 1300Ah cell is coming in Q4. At SNEC 2026, Hithium presented its ∞Cell 1300Ah LFP cell (190+ Wh/kg, 406+ Wh/L, 25+ year design life) and a 6.9 MW / 55.2 MWh eight-hour containerized system, with mass delivery of the 1300Ah cell planned for Q4 2026.
BYD lands 11.275 GWh in Abu Dhabi. BYD won an 11.275 GWh storage order from Masdar for the Round The Clock project in Abu Dhabi (reported 10 July 2026), supplying its Haohan system built on a 2,710Ah Blade cell, with Sungrow taking the remaining 7.5 GWh of the 19 GWh project.
LFP's share keeps climbing. CABIA data reported 17 July 2026 shows China installed 76.5 GWh of power batteries in June 2026 (+31.5% YoY), with LFP at 63.7 GWh taking an 83.3% share while ternary fell 5.5% month on month to 12.7 GWh. H1 2026 cumulative installations reached 335.6 GWh (+12.0% YoY).
| Vendor | What | Key numbers | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| CATL | TENER Sodium, first field-validated sodium-ion BESS (Munich, 22 Jun) | ~1 GWh cumulative shipments expected by end-2026 | CN Sep 2026 · global Jun 2027 |
| Hithium | ∞Cell 1300Ah LFP cell + 8-hour containerized system | 190+ Wh/kg · 406+ Wh/L · 6.9 MW / 55.2 MWh | mass delivery Q4 2026 |
| BYD | Haohan system for Masdar's Round The Clock project, Abu Dhabi | 11.275 GWh order · 2,710Ah Blade cell | reported 10 Jul 2026 |
June installations up 31.5% YoY; H1 2026 cumulative 335.6 GWh, up 12.0% YoY. CABIA via AskCI
Lithium is high and expected to drift higher. Battery-grade lithium carbonate stood at roughly 160,000 yuan/mt at end-June 2026, within an H1 range of 149,600 to 177,000 yuan/mt and after a brief futures spike above 200,000 in May. SMM expects a fluctuating upward trend in H2 on persistent shortages and destocking.
Storage cell prices point to a Q4 peak. 314Ah LFP storage cell prices rose from 0.32 yuan/Wh in January to about 0.365 yuan/Wh in May 2026, and SMM forecasts a mild Q3 rise followed by a likely annual price peak in Q4, driven by an export rush ahead of China's VAT rebate cancellation.
May point is the brief futures spike above 200,000 (futures, not spot); end-June spot ≈160,000 (approx). Dashed line: H1 spot-range low 149,600 (high 177,000). SMM sees a fluctuating upward H2. SMM
May value is SMM's "about 0.365" (approx). SMM forecasts a mild Q3 rise and a likely annual price peak in Q4 on the pre-VAT-cancellation export rush. SMM
GM and Redwood put a price tag on second-life. GM and Redwood Materials announced on 9 June 2026 a 1.5 MW / 7.2 MWh storage system built from about 100 repurposed GM EV battery packs at a GM plant in Michigan, projected to cut the plant's electricity costs by over $3 million across the system's lifetime, with roughly 10,000 GM packs already in the pipeline via Redwood Energy.
GWh-scale second-life capacity just arrived. Moment Energy opened "Megafactory 1" in British Columbia on 23 June 2026, billed as the world's largest second-life EV battery factory and built out in six weeks, targeting 1 GWh of annual repurposed-storage output by 2030, backed by a US$40 million Series B and CA$4.9 million in Canadian government funding.
Verify the batch when it arrives. The traceability code printed on a Chinese-made cell can only be read once the goods are in your hands. When a delivery lands, paste a code into the decoder: it returns the manufacturer, chemistry, spec and exact production date in seconds, enough to catch relabeled or aged stock before you sign off the batch.
Paste any code from a Chinese-made cell. The decoder reads the maker, the spec and the true factory date. Full tool at batterydays.com.
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